Dark Chocolate Salted Almonds are easy to make, make great gifts, and taste delicious.

DARK CHOCOLATE SALTED ALMONDS

When you have a 3-ingredient recipe, you need to use the three best quality ingredients that you can afford.

CHOCOLATE

The best chocolate for melting and dipping is not chocolate chips. In fact, chocolate chips are meant to stay in ‘chips’. They don’t melt smoothly. For melting and coating, you want to use “couverture” chocolate. Couverture chocolate has a higher percentage of cocoa butter than baking or eating chocolate. This additional cocoa butter, combined with proper tempering, gives the chocolate more sheen, a firmer “snap” when broken, and a creamy mellow flavor. Callebaut Belgian Dark is a good one. Kakaozon is another good melting and coating chocolate. Also, if you don’t want to order or search for those brands, I always keep Ghirardelli or Baker’s brand semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate on hand.

ALMONDS

Almonds are rich in nutrients, like magnesium, vitamin E, and dietary fiber. For this recipe, I prefer roasted almonds. If all you can find is roasted salted that’s fine to get. You may want to hold back on the salt you add.

SALT

You’ll want to use a courser, grainer salt for topping your chocolate-covered almonds. It gives your almonds both texture and flavor. You can get course sea salt or Himalayan pink salt.

METHOD FOR MELTING AND MIXING

I found the easiest way to make these is to melt the chocolate in a glass bowl in the microwave. Make sure the bowl is large enough for the almonds. Melt the chocolate at 30-second intervals. Stop and stir the chocolate after every 30 seconds.

Stir until the chocolate is smooth. Next, stir the almonds in and make sure they are covered completely.

Lay a sheet of waxed paper, parchment paper, or foil on your counter. Place a cooling rack (like this) over the paper and pour the almonds onto the rack. Spread them out so that they don’t clump together when dry. This particular rack has squares small enough that the almonds don’t fall through. If you don’t have a cooling rack, no worries. You can use a fork and let some of the chocolate drips off before you place them on the paper or you can break them apart after they dry.

The main thing is you’ll need to sprinkle the salt onto the almonds quickly before the chocolate sets. It actually sets fast and the salt won’t stick. Be aware and work quickly or in batches if necessary.